Truth or Dare (film): Nice idea, not a great film

It's nuts to me that this film has been around since 2018 and I am just now finding out about it but I think this is best explained by the fact that I didn't even finish the film because it simply isn't very good.

I enjoy supernatural horror films and this one would probably fall into the same category as Final Destination. Evil things beyond the control of the people involved are out to get them and they cannot get away from it unless they complete some certain steps necessary to get it to happen. A curse of sorts is on the normally quite attractive twenty-somethings and they are in a race against time to get it done before they all die. Meh.

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I believe it is quite tough to get this sort of genre to be watchable because it's tough for a lot of people, like me, intellectuals if you will (haha), that have some sort of standards of plausibility that need to exist in their films.

The reason why I was ok with the supernatural aspect of Final Destination for the most part was because the forces that were out to get you were something that to some degree affected everyone around as well. The crazy things that happened could be seen by everyone even though the force was only after the one person at a time. Does that makes sense? Maybe not. I'll give you an example.

The famous log truck scene in Final Destination 2 that traumatized all of us for years, well it actually really happened.

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The person who these logs were meant for wasn't hallucinating the incident and there were other cars affected by this happening. It was real.

In Truth or Dare as well as another film I liked called Smile the people being targeted by the evil force hallucinate things that control what is going on around them, but only they can see it.

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It begins the same for everyone: They will see someone smiling at them and it has a gruesome voice and says "Truth or Dare" and then well, they choose. But the problem here is that they are the only person that can actually see this specter even though it will often be in a busy public place and the hallucination is someone they were just having another conversation with. Then when the argue with the "spirit" the other people cannot hear any of that and they hallucination conveniently ends right when they spit out the truth which as far as I made it into the film is always something really embarrassing for the people around them.

The others around them never see the hallucination and I have real problem with this is supernatural horror films. This is why I don't like the IT films. Pennywise has the ability to get into your head and make you see things that are not there at any time? This doesn't seem very fair now does it?

Smile was the same way and even though I enjoyed that film I was very critical of this evil that you cannot escape, which is fair enough, but only you can see what is happening? That is just stupid to me and so far beyond the realm of possibility that it ruins the films that they use this in for me.

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There is a bit of a Saw aspect going on in this film as well because the dare portions that the group are forced to do are all pretty gruesome but not really something you haven't seen before. If the members of the group refuse to play or don't tell the truth or don't do the dare properly the evil force just takes over their body and suicides them. I dunno man, this just seems really dumb to me.

Should I watch it?

Honestly, if you are into this sort of supernatural horror sort of stuff there are a lot of other films in this category that are a lot better. I would say start with Smile or Talk to Me, Us, or maybe even Get Out. This film is right in line with all of those but just not executed as well. The situations in Truth or Dare are just too ludicrous and the hallucination aspect of it was just a bit too much for me to accept.

There are some jump scares in it and the definitely borrowed or stole the scary smile aspect from Smile but in the end it just isn't enough to stay engaging. I do not know how this ends but I presume they did it in such a way where a sequel was possible with the prettiest people being the only survivors. It made pretty good money at the box office as these movies tend to even when they are not very good.

_{Even though I don't think you should bother watching it I am a bit dismayed to find out that you are not able to legally stream this on any subscription service. It can only be rented or bought and nobody is going to do that}